A Compassionate Nation [Independence Day]
The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson
Deuteronomy 10:17-21
A Compassionate Nation
It seems to me that no one loved the nation of the Hebrews
more than Moses. That guy was all
in. He risked his life to rescue them
from slavery in Egypt. He spent forty
years wandering with them through desert wastelands. He stuck with them after the golden calf,
through the coup d’etats, and despite much, much murmuring.
And he didn’t do it for the perks. Sure he was leader of the nation, something
of a proto-king. But the role really
only offered the negatives associated with power. And so he was subject to all the complaint
and plenty of second-guessing. He was embarrassed
by the nation’s many missteps, which certainly reflected poorly on the one in
charge. He was expected to provide food
in a food desert and water in an actual desert.
He knocked on God’s door to beg and plead for the people, on their
behalf, countless times.
And while those headaches are not unique to Moses, they
usually come with some degree of luxury or a least enough compensation to make the
stress worthwhile. But not for Moses. He did not live in a royal palace; he
wandered around in the harsh desert. He
did not dine on sumptuous feasts; he ate a weird pasty bread-like substance off
of the ground. He did not sip expensive
wines in the evening; when there was water, which was not always, he drank it
out of rocks. I don’t even think he drew
a salary. And this rugged lifestyle is
all the more trying when one considers that this guy, Moses, he grew up in the
palaces of Egypt. And so he knew how the
other kings lived; and he knew: it was not like this.
But there he was: with them every step of the way – and there
were a lot of steps, especially during those forty years of desert wandering. Moses loved that nation. He dedicated his life to a people, called in
the Bible, “stubborn and stiff-necked.”
Sure, there were times he was frustrated, even angry, with them. But he never left. He never stopped loving them. This was his nation – for better and for
worse.
Moses loved his nation enough to persistently hold the belief
that even the worst could get better. He
loved his nation so much that he dared to hold it to a high standard. And that is what we see in today’s Old
Testament lesson.
The book of Deuteronomy, from which today’s lesson is taken, is
considered Moses’ farewell speech to his nation, the nation to which he
dedicated his life. It was his final opportunity
to advise his people, to show them the path toward a brighter future, to the
God wanted for them. And as such, it is
a book of both encouragement and challenge – because love lives in that
tension.
For Moses, the nation’s future was dependent on two things:
their ability to remember their story and their willingness to be
compassionate. Both of these elements
are present in our reading this morning.
And much of the book of Deuteronomy, Moses’ final words to his people,
is a variation on this same theme: remember your story, remember who you are
and where you came from, and be compassionate.
The future of the nation is grounded always in its past. And so Moses reminds them, as he does
throughout the book, that they were strangers in the land of Egypt. That is who they are and where they came from;
it is in their DNA. And Moses reminds
them that God has always been at work in their lives; God did before their eyes
great and awesome things – like rescue them from Egypt and sustain them in the
desert. Moses reminds them, repeatedly,
because even the miracles prove easy to forget.
And there will come a day, we see this repeatedly in the Hebrew
Scriptures, when the people will forget where they came from; they will forget
their stories. And in the place of their
stories they will write new tales in which God is absent and they are no longer
strangers but heroic adventurers who beat the odds. In the new tales they will marvel at their own
accomplishments and revel in their superiority.
And as the new tales take hold, and the old true stories
fade, so will their compassion. That is what Moses feared. Because
when the nation forgets its immigrant past, it sees the immigrants as other, as
threat, as inferior. And that is why
Moses is so intent, with some of his final words, to impress on them the
importance of being a compassionate nation.
Moses is not making a suggestion here either. This is a command: You shall love the
stranger. And he is not done. He keeps bringing it up, over and over and
over again, throughout the book. He even
puts some teeth in it at one point late in the book when he says, “Cursed be
anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice.” And then, Moses, like a Baptist preacher,
reminds the people that they agree with him, adding, “All the people shall say,
‘AMEN!’” Moses is not dying until his
nation pledges to be a compassionate people, to love those living in their
margins.
Today we eavesdrop on this conversation between Moses and the
nation he loved, loved enough to challenge.
We hear these ancient words today as we celebrate the nation we
love. Our Book of Common Prayer has listed
Independence Day as a feast in our Church calendar since the 1920’s. And while it might feel like this Scripture
reading was chosen especially for this moment in our national history, as we
agonize over the situation at our southern border, this lesson from the book of
Deuteronomy has been the first Scripture lesson of the liturgy since this commemoration
was instituted in our Church almost 100 years ago.
In the 1920’s, when this lesson was chosen, immigration was a
contentious topic in our country.
Imagine that. Between 1880 and
1920 around 25 million people from other nations came to this country – many of
them from Eastern Europe, including many Jews fleeing religious persecution.[1]
It was during this period that my wife’s
Lebanese ancestors left their home country for these shores, desperate to escape
the escalating violence. Perhaps your
family has similar stories.
This wave of immigrants also, of course, fueled
anti-immigrant sentiment. Restrictions
on immigration increased. The Ku Klux
Klan, which had previously been a small movement confined to the South,
exploded nationally in the 1920’s – gaining up to 6 million members, including,
they claimed, more than 40,0000 ordained Christian ministers, some quite
prominent.[2]
During these tense and contentious times, our Episcopal
predecessors chose to make Independence Day a day of prayer. Because they loved this nation. And they understood that love lives in that
tension of encouragement and challenge.
And so they chose this lesson from Deuteronomy to represent that
tension. It is a lesson that calls us to
remember our story. That we, like Moses’
nation, were once a nation of immigrants drawn to the light emanating from the
torch of freedom. Our ancestors were
once those who responded to the invitation that graces the island of Lady
Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.”[3] That
is our story.
And when we forget that story, we forget that we are called to be a
compassionate nation. When we forget our
story, we forget that this nation was formed around the ideal that all people
are created equal. As Christians we
articulate that same idea by affirming that each and every person, regardless
of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, identity, citizenship, or
anything else that we draw lines around or through, each and every person is
created in the image of God, is of sacred worth, is worthy of love, is one of
us.
I am not a politician. And I am
exceedingly glad about that. I don’t
have to craft complex policies or satiate my partisan base or please my donors. I don’t have the truly difficult job of figuring
out the hows or the whys.
What I am is a Christian. And I
am a citizen of this nation, a nation that I love. And as a Christian and a citizen I have a
responsibility, like Moses, to celebrate and encourage and challenge my
country. And so do you. Because I know that we all want to see our
nation always live into its better, to be a nation where there is liberty and
justice for all, to be the nation of our best dreams, and most importantly, to be
the nation God dreams for us to be. And
so it is our duty, as Christian citizens, to remind our nation, and, when
necessary, to challenge our nation to be a nation of compassionate people – a nation
that respects the dignity of every human being, a nation that lives out its ideal,
written in the beginning of our story, that all people, all people, are created
equal.
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